“Cos i gènere: projectes transversals des de l’art contemporani” is the training proposal for teachers developed by the museum in conjunction with the CEP Jaume Cañellas Mut teacher training centre in Palma during the 2016-17 academic year. On this occasion, with the aim of creating a community of teachers who carry out their work in the long term on the basis of contemporary art, the focus was on working on the issue of gender, linking it to performance as an artistic language.

Gender is an essential part of Es Baluard’s programme line, on the level of analysis of art history and critical analysis, and it is moreover essential that it is introduced in particular during adolescence; connected to the work based on one’s own body through performance, it has opened up expressive possibilities that have seldom been explored in teaching.Teachers from different educational centres have participated in this training, which is seen as “Inter-centre training. In parallel to the actual theoretical and practical training sessions for teachers, a real, practical application was carried out in the classroom with pupils, which resulted in the staging of different performances. The content of these performances focusses on one aspect or other of the gender themes dealt with during the project. Each class group selected a specific theme in accordance with their interests and concerns, and as a result we find that subjects such as roles, stereotypes, prejudices and homosexuality have been dealt with.

The structure of the training proposal was as follows:

Training sessions for teachers, given by:

Gender: Meritxell Esquirol, a cultural analyst specialising in gender

Contemporary art and gender: the museum’s education team (based on the Es Baluard collection)

Performance: Maite Villar and MartíFons (ESADIB)

After these sessions, the teachers went on to work on the subject with their groups of pupils, and visited the museum’s workshop where gender concepts were linked to contemporary art and new themes and questions were broached.

Based on the visit to the museum, three different sessions were developed in the centres, to reinforce contents and channel the performances. As well as the monitoring of the different projects by the museum’s education team, we have had the support of Lluki Portas, a graduate of ESADIB, which whom enriching sessions for work on the body were carried out with the pupils.

The participating centres are:

IES Ses Estacions (Palma): a group from 1st year of ESO (Obligatory Secondary Education)

Escola Superior de Disseny (Palma): a first-year group

IES Guillem Colom Casasnovas (Sóller): a group from 4th year of ESO

IES Binissalem: a group from 1st year of ESO

IES Santanyí: a group from 4th year of ESO

The public presentation of the work will take place in the museum’s Auditori, in two sessions:

2nd June at 10.30 am, meeting of pupils and teachers from the participating centres